Yes. You are a lucky boy to have seen that. I have not seen one of those gentlemen show his “flukes,” as they call them, since I was a boy on the Cornish coast.
Where is he gone?
Hunting mackerel, away out at sea. But did you notice something odd about his tail, as you call it—though it is really none?
It looked as if it was set on flat, and not upright, like a fish’s. But why is it not a tail?
Just because it is set on flat, not upright: and learned men will tell you that those two flukes are the “rudiments”—that is, either the beginning, or more likely the last remains—of two hind feet. But that belongs to the second volume of Madam How’s Book of Kind; and you have not yet learned any of the first volume, you know, except about a few butterflies. Look here! Here are more whales coming. Don’t be frightened. They are only little ones, mackerel-hunting, like the big one.
What pretty smooth things, turning head over heels, and saying, “Hush, Hush!”
They don’t really turn clean over; and that “Hush” is their way of breathing.
Are they the young ones of that great monster?
No; they are porpoises. That big one is, I believe, a bottle-nose. But if you want to know about the kinds of whales, you must ask Dr. Flower at the Royal College of Surgeons, and not me: and he will tell you wonderful things about them.—How some of them have mouths full of strong teeth, like these porpoises; and others, like the great sperm whale in the South Sea, have huge teeth in their lower jaws, and in the upper only holes into which those teeth fit; others like the bottle-nose, only two teeth or so in the lower jaw; and others, like the narwhal, two straight tusks in the upper jaw, only one of which grows, and is what you call a narwhal’s horn.
Oh yes. I know of a walking-stick made of one.
And strangest of all, how the right-whales have a few little teeth when they are born, which never come through the gums; but, instead, they grow all along their gums, an enormous curtain of clotted hair, which serves as a net to keep in the tiny sea-animals on which they feed, and let the water strain out.
You mean whalebone? Is whalebone hair?
So it seems. And so is a rhinoceros’s horn. A rhinoceros used to be hairy all over in old times: but now he carries all his hair on the end of his nose, except a few bristles on his tail. And the right-whale, not to be done in oddity, carries all his on his gums.
But have no whales any hair?
No real whales: but the Manati, which is very nearly a whale, has long bristly hair left. Don’t you remember M.’s letter about the one he saw at Rio Janeiro?
This is all very funny: but what is the use of knowing so much about things’ teeth and hair?